In a survey, 84% of responders prefer personalized support. Treating them like a person is important to win business from them.

A help desk support team with expert professionals helps you achieve that.

But if you don’t follow a systematic way, your support team will get overwhelmed with requests. This delays service time and hampers customer experience. 

What’s the solution? 

Help desk tiers!

Help desk tiers let you manage support activities and resolve customers’ issues faster. This saves time and effort on both employee and customer sides. 

Let’s discuss the help desk tiers in detail.

Help Desk Tiers: What Are They and Their Importance?

An organization’s IT help desk support system has different levels or tiers, known as help desk tiers. These tiers are based on how complex an issue is and the expertise needed to resolve the issue. 

With help desk tiers, an organization manages support issues efficiently. This helps you offer outstanding customer support experiences . Each of these tiers includes support personnel with suitable responsibilities, roles, and expertise. 

Example: Companies keep simpler issues at lower-level support. They keep complex ones at higher-level support. This allows teams to resolve issues faster with the help of relevant experts. 

Organizations structure help desk tiers as per their needs, customer base, and resources. Usually, there are three main help desk tiers:

  • Tier 1 or Frontline Support
  • Tier 2 or Technical Support
  • Tier 3 or Expert Support

Tier 1 Support

Frontline or tier 1 support is the first level where person-to-person contact happens. End users can contact the customer support team when facing any issues. 

In general, simpler issues come at this level that don’t need core technical expertise. Tier 1 activities include: 

  • Account setup and management for users
  • Software installation and updates 
  • Frequently asked questions
  • Product usage guidance
  • More details on a procedure that documentation doesn’t provide 

Support personnel at tier 1 must be read to resolve these issues promptly. These professionals have customer service skills and technical knowledge to handle queries. Most requests land at tier 1 for resolution. If the team is unable to resolve an issue, it will go to the next higher level. 

Example: A customer buys a new service subscription but can’t set up their account. They reach out to the support team and are directed to tier 1. The staff listens to their difficulties and assists them in setting up their account.

Tier 2 or Technical Support

Technical or tier 2 support is where more complex issues come in. Being complex, these queries usually need more time to resolve the issues. Tier 2 involves the following activities to fix deeper technical support queries:

  • Remediate software errors and glitches
  • Resolving permission or access-related issues
  • Fixing login- and password-related errors
  • Fixing bugs after a patch
  • Handling product functionality complaints 
  • Customizing product add-ons 
  • Visiting the user if needed

To handle complex issues, support staff at tier 2 have advanced skills. They have more experience, expertise, and stronger product knowledge. But, they don’t have to be software developers. If any issue is unknown or can’t be solved at this level, it will go to the next higher level, i.e., tier 3. 

Example: A user complains about a malfunctioning software application. This issue comes to tier 2 professionals who listens to the user’s difficulties and takes notes. They start finding the root cause of the issue using different methods and tools. Next, they fix the issue and inform the user so they can try using the product again. 

Tier 3 or Expert Support

Expert or tier 3 support is the top-level support for a user if they face a critical product issue. These issues are beyond the scope of tier 1 and 2. So, they need expert-level intervention and take a lot longer time to resolve. 

Tier 3 activities include:

  • Resolving advanced technical errors and incidents
  • Collaborating with software developers and designers to assist in issue mediation  
  • Developing new applications to solve emerging challenges
  • Rewriting code to address serious issues and improve product quality
  • Server maintenance 
  • Documenting and reporting issues and resolutions 
  • Assisting in the creation of knowledge-base articles 

Support staff at tier 3 are highly trained and have an advanced level of expertise in a product or service. Many of them take part in software development as well. They are software architects, engineers, developers, and more. They know the product’s functions, performance, and other areas to guide users. Also, they have top-level access permissions and resources like tools, code, documents, etc. 

Example: A tier 3 support staff receives a security-related complaint from a user. They inspect the application for security issues and find a critical vulnerability. The team finally decides to rewrite blocks of code that had issues. 

How Do Help Desk Tiers Enhance Customer Support and Operational Efficiency? 

Organized Customer Support

Help desk tiers help enhance customer experience offering relevant solutions to issues proactively. On receiving the complaint, the team directs the ticket to a suitable help desk tier.

This way, customers’ queries are solved faster and they don’t have to wait longer to hear back from the support team. This improves customer experience and boosts their loyalty to your brand.

Operational Efficiency

Various support tiers offer a well-organized and streamlined approach to customer support. Highly critical issues go to the top-level tier while simple issues go to the basic-level tier. 

In a study, 86% of support teams say that having a help desk system improves their productivity. 

As a result, queries will come to relevant staff with appropriate expertise to deal with an issue. This facilitates smooth issue-resolution while reducing friction between teams and saving time. Besides, you can distribute resources effectively based on each tier’s requirements. This helps improve operational efficiency and support team performance.

Scalability

Help desk support tiers enable an organization to scale easily with its growth. How? As a business expands, its services, customers, and operations increase. This means more queries for the support team to work on. 

With time, you can add more tiers to your help desk support, like:

  • Tier 0 for ultra-simple queries or self-help guides for customers, or
  • Tier 4 to outsource support teams to a reliable third-party service provider. 

Conclusion

Help desk tiers are a valuable element of an organization’s customer service strategy. These tiers address customer challenges faster and help increase satisfaction rates. So, apply help desk tiers in your organization and streamline the support process. 

Author

Veranika Kavaliova, Help Desk Manager

Veranika has 15 years of experience in IT. She started as a software test engineer and gradually became a customer support engineer responsible for the entire life cycle of issue resolution and software improvements. Since 2020, Veranika ensures the delivery of high-quality help desk and application support services at ScienceSoft.